Entries in the 'Society' Category

Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Us That We Have To Unite?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOn one hand, nature treats me lovingly. Even if I can’t see this with the naked eye, when penetrating a bit deeper, I can see its true attitude. People who are close to nature feel that it is entirely good.

At the same time, externally it is very harsh, similar to a loving but demanding father who scrupulously takes a child through the phases of development. That is how we must view what is happening. Otherwise we won’t understand good and evil and will only get confused.

If I want to feel nature this way, then I must reject the externality and immerse myself inwards. Precisely from nature’s external attitude, which seems negative to me, I must start to develop based on the realization of evil. In reality nature is showing me a negative of myself. By correcting it, I will enter inside and will feel its love.

All the negative external phenomena are intended to show me what I must correct in order to attain love. It’s exactly how parents raise a child: The father looks at him with a strict gaze and the mother is nervous. It’s very hard to recognize their love. But this is the discernment that I have to be very sensitive to while developing the inner feeling of the realization of evil.

Perhaps I don’t notice the negative. The parents are only giving me hints, but I don’t understand what they want from me or perhaps I don’t feel that they need something from me at all. Instead I continue fooling around. Then they tell it to me directly, but I still don’t listen. At the end, after all the persuasions and warnings, the troubles start, and that is something I understand very well. “Why didn’t you tell me that right away?” I wonder.

This is the problem of all of us and of each of us separately – a lack of sensitivity. If I now felt what I lack in order to discern nature’s love, then I would immediately correct myself. Therefore, we have to take care of just one thing – our receptivity to the realization of evil between us and to the love coming from the Creator.

We don’t lack examples. Open your eyes and you will see them. So what is standing in our way? The problem is that the world does not imbue us with a basic attitude to goodness. I need a society or environment in which I will reveal goodness and compare it to my own evil.

The realization of evil begins the moment a person feels that he is worse than those around him. He sees them all as interconnected and united by love for one another, but he cannot join them and feel that he shares that unity. This gap is the evil that a person has to reveal and correct.

By realizing the evil and by trying to correct it, a person discovers that he does not have the slightest shred to grab hold of or the slightest access. He clearly sees that the friends are united and he is separated from them, and he does not see any opportunity to join them, having no loophole into their unity. For that he needs the Light that reforms. Only the Creator’s help will save him.

That is where we finally come in contact with the unity of Israel, the Torah, and the Creator.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11 on Global Education

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Russia: The Path To Prosperity Or Nazism?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is your opinion about the situation in Russia?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes in The Writings of the Last Generation that in the future, precisely after the failure of socialism in Russia, favorable conditions will emerge for the formation of fascism (Nazism).

It is facilitated by the complicated social situation and strengthened nationalistic tendencies, which can spiral out of control of authorities and lead to Nazism. Other problems like unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction, and layoffs in military and law enforcement do not help in bringing peace to the society. But most of all, the immense and unbeatable corruption causes indignation and hopelessness.

Authorities constantly support and nourish the dreams of people about becoming a great power, but they are unrealizable and therefore dangerous. Becoming a super power through the force of weapons is dangerous, and it leads the country to humanitarian disaster. Millions of additional people are necessary for the development of the country. However, the nationalistic trends prevent accepting these people from outside.

Solution: Only the realization that the method of correction enclosed in nature itself, revealed to us through Kabbalah, can save the country and make it flourish. Besides, it can allow it to be proud of its spiritual mission of bringing the Light to the world. The country will be able to take pride in its spiritual might rather than in its narrow nationalistic power that everybody hates. Will we be able to persuasively explain this solution to the Russian nation?
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How Can An Egoist Pray For Bestowal?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can an egoistic heart ask for bestowal?

Answer: Of course, an egoistic heart is unable to ask for bestowal. It prays for something that it deems better for itself. It doesn’t know how to pray in any other way.

However, the nature in which a person exists is one thing, but how he uses that mechanism is a different matter. Even though he is an egoist and his prayer and attitude to others are egoistic, nevertheless he arranges this entire mechanism in such a way that lets him attract the Light that reforms.

How does the Torah, the Light that reforms act? I am an egoist and I plan on using it egoistically, but through that I activate a mechanism that attracts Light to me that turns me into the opposite of what I am today. This means that this Light returns me back to its source.

If I was already asking for bestowal on my own, then I would not need to be brought back to the source. Everything would already be clear. However, everything is arranged so that even when I shout for bestowal, this is still reception in disguise.

The same thing happens on every level. When I ascend to a certain level and check: What did I pray for? What did I do? What love for the neighbor did I talk about? What I find is that it was all egoistic. What seemed like holiness on the lower level appears as “garbage” when you look at it from above.

But there is a special mechanism of ascent: the connection between AHP of the upper one and Galgalta Eynaim of the lower one. If I face darkness and confusion, and I lower myself before the society that helps me to do so, then I attract the Light that reforms. I mix Malchut with Bina – mercy that reigns in the upper one, with the force of judgment that is in me. That is how I attain my correction.

Therefore, we are not required to be holy from the beginning, but only to organize everything to the extent we are able in order to attract holiness to us. Before that, I am opposite to it! Otherwise, how would it be possible to correct yourself after the breaking?

Every time we receive any new state, all the previous states are erased from our memory so as not to confuse us. The current state is also not very clear to us and from this darkness we have to start arranging everything so as to attract the influence of the upper force to us – the influence of the higher level, the quality of bestowal that we don’t have. We continuously receive a new force and become a new creation.

This is what the common prayer is all about. It is the prayer to acquire the force to be included in society and to feel care for the neighbor.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Prayer For Society

Dr. Michael LaitmanYou and I were not created by accident. The Creator wanted for creation to become the same as He, and everything happening to us is moving toward this goal. Therefore, on this path we have to go through the realization that we are divided, separated, and hate one another. However, we receive the force to unite above this hatred, which gradually increases more and more. That’s because we cannot overcome and rise above all of the hatred reigning in us all at once. But if we can overcome it gradually, step by step, then we will acquire the quality of bestowal, mutual attention, care, the quality of Bina that does not allow us to do to another what we hate. And after that we reach love for the neighbor “as for ourselves.”

That is why the entire science of Kabbalah, which is called the science of truth, talks only about unity. It’s because inside unity, we, people, attain the qualities of the Creator.

If people get together and unite in one desire in order to multiply every person’s forces and give each other the guarantee that through their common efforts they will attain the desired goal and will gain greater confidence, this is called “a society of clowns and liars.” That’s because they think that through their unity they will be able to gain greater egoistic benefit. Therefore, their common prayer acts destructively and separates them from the goal.

A person has to understand that he unites with others only in order to discern how to ascend above his nature. It’s not to receive greater force from the society or to satisfy the demands of his egoism, but to enter inside this society and start bestowing to it. This is the only force we should look for.

The force of bestowal to society comes form the Light, from the Creator, from what is concealed inside of a person’s relationship with the society, the group. That is to say, the group has to consist of people who unite precisely in order to attain the Creator, the common quality of bestowal.

The Creator does not exist separately from creation. The quality of common bestowal does not exist unless there is a person who reveals it. Therefore, if a person includes himself into the group that aspires to the quality of bestowal and there he desires to find this force, to attain this quality, he starts to understand from his unity with others that this care about society, inside of which the quality of bestowal exists, or care for the Creator, which is the same thing, is the prayer of the society.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/27/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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A Time Of Change

Dr. Michael LaitmanNow is a time of serious economic processes taking place. The crisis is rising up again in a new wave and this requires the world’s elite circles to make decisions they are not ready to make. That’s because everyone will have to make the shift to limited consumption.

The consumer society is over! The Earth does not have the resources to support unrestrained development. The golden billion cannot offer its way of life and its ideals to the other six billion. And by that it evokes intense hatred toward itself as well as the desire of others to rob it.

Nature does not have the energy reserves for us to keep increasing consumption and among other things, that means we gradually have to give up nuclear energy. We unwillingly have to start becoming a society of “intelligent” consumption, meaning consume to the degree of necessity, where necessity means “sufficient for existence” in the modern conditions.

The modern political and economic elite have justified and legitimized their power by promising people increasingly higher levels of consumption. This is exactly the reason why they cannot change the direction from ever increasing consumption to “intelligent consumption.”

Any decision said out loud will inevitably cause a drastic conflict in society and most importantly, distrust of the elite because in the any case society will understand that people’s income will no longer increase, that there are very difficult times ahead for us, and this will last a long time. Moreover, the consequences of this pressure in society are unpredictable….

A new ideology of development has to come forth, and it won’t be in the direction of consumption anymore. A new political elite has to be raised to suit the new ideology, and that elite will be able to change the system. Yet, the elite of the past won’t disappear. It will fight back. That is why it is necessary to provide a wide explanation of the objective laws that are being revealed to us, of nature’s limited resources, and the integral society. This will create wide ranging social support and a critical mass of interested people.

It is necessary to develop a wide social discussion about the objective need to replace the consumer society’s egoistic development with global, integral development that is in balance with nature, meaning one in which society consumes from nature to the degree that provide every person with the necessary and deserving existence. An intense the social discussion will enable a quick emergence of a large group of people who will gradually discern how to build society upon the new principles.

This will give rise to a new understanding of the methods to manage business and government, how to unite the ideological scheme with the governmental scheme, as well as to develop the concepts of the new governance and the ways of transitioning to it.

Closing comment: The “simplest” method of restricted consumption can be exemplified through a prohibition on advertising, which is “the engine of trade.” It is necessary to gradually prohibit advertising that compels people to buy an enormous amount of products that they don’t need at all, with the exception of the products that society determines to be necessary.
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A Farewell To The Old World

Dr. Michael LaitmanMaterial development of man comes to a halt and frees space for a new stage of evolution.

Today all spheres of our lives are permeated with despair. It has come to a point where we don’t know what to do with our children. After all, we brought them into this world for a good life, but this is not what we see approaching in the future.

Why should a person harness himself to a family life if it doesn’t bring him any positive changes? There should be a reason for taking on such a heavy burden.

Being tied to a particular place or a country is becoming a thing of the past. People simply want a better life, and they are ready to go wherever they can find it. This is how we break down all the borders, limitations, and the old “wrappings,” in which we developed for thousands of years.

In the past it was clear to a person that he belonged to a certain nation, place, and culture, that he was attached to his family and to everything that represented life’s foundation at that time. From generation to generation fathers taught their children a profession: A son of a blacksmith eventually became a blacksmith, and a son of a shepherd became a shepherd. A young man knew that he would marry a girl from a nearby village, and life proceeded according to these rules.

Today everything has changed. People worldwide are abandoning old rules. Our egoism, our inner desires, and our consciousness are quickly transforming, only we ourselves don’t know what they’re transforming into.

We are led by our desire for fulfillment, and this desire is destroying all barriers that used to keep us within the generally accepted boundaries. In our time nothing is generally accepted or obvious. Everything is unsteady and impermanent. Whatever is convenient at the moment is considered right.

People have risen above the limitations in which they existed throughout history. In the heights of this process we don’t realize the scale of changes that are taking place. The borders have been erased and people are ready to feel at home in any given country. Whether we want it or not, the earth is becoming a common territory. And even though we are at the beginning of this new trend, it is nonetheless irreversible.

Along with this process we are revealing a new kind of emptiness which can’t be filled regardless of where we live or what we do. Our elevation above old limitations and our readiness for new forms of development don’t allow us to fulfill our growing desire. It’s this desire that elevated us above the old world and threw us right into the storm of changes. It demands the kind of fulfillment that can’t be found anywhere.

Humanity is in crisis: It will either find a new form of fulfillment or it will have to calm itself down with alcohol, drugs, and antidepressants. Actually, this is already happening on an ever-increasing scale. But this isn’t a solution, and sooner or later (better sooner) we’ll realize that it’s time to replace material fulfillment with the spiritual one.
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From the 4thpart of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/22/11 on The Principles of Global Education

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You Can’t Live Without Women

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why does society have a dismissive attitude to women? Why do men consider women beneath them?

Answer: This attitude results from the fact that a woman cannot attain spirituality on her own. She depends on a man for this.

Our common soul consists of the male and female parts where the female part, Nukva, is the desire for fulfillment. In our world this is expressed through the fact that a woman needs a home, that she has to give birth to children and take care of them. Her children encompass her entire life. That is why she depends on society to a greater extent than a man. She needs stability and confidence in tomorrow.

In other words, a woman feels more unsatisfied and this is a premise for her spiritual development, although it is perceived as weakness in our egoistic world. In spiritual motion everything is opposite because the greater the desire, the more a person advances. We, the creatures, depend only on desire. And if this desire is oriented the right way, then this is the key to success.

Therefore, unless the men absorb the women’s desire, they will not be able to advance toward spirituality.
From the lesson on 3/5/11, Writings of Rabash

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Joy Is A Sign Of Bestowal

Dr. Michael LaitmanYesterday while watching our TV channel I saw a broadcast of the cultural program that was held at the big Convention in Israel last fall. It included performances by different groups and special dances of different nations from all parts of the world where people came from to attend the Convention. There was a huge audience and a very special atmosphere, making it impossible to take your eyes away from the TV screen. I had to watch it until the very end.

I didn’t see any disappointed or dejected faces there because every person was influenced by the common inspiration and the entire hall was filled with joy, hope, excitement, and inspiration. And it wasn’t even because any special spiritual revelation was taking place there, but simply because the mood of the society influenced every person in this way. Every person that was part of it felt happy and joyful at that moment.

That is the power of social influence and it is the only thing we lack in order to advance at every moment in time. On the path we cannot demand any revelation other than the revelation of bestowal, meaning the correction that enables me only to bestow, to connect to others and not to demand anything else, like Bina which does not desire anything for herself (Hafetz Hesed).

The Creator demands for us to become the same as Him: To bestow for the sake of bestowal, and then to receive for the sake of bestowal. That is why our advancement always happens “above knowledge,” meaning we cannot ask for any other quality or fulfillment to manifest in our sensations besides the quality of bestowal. Moreover, I don’t even care whether I will be given the opportunity to bestow. I don’t expect anything in response form the Creator besides the very aspiration for bestowal which will always develop in me, more and more.

The world does not understand this attitude yet and we, too, are only gradually coming closer to being able to hear and understand what is the essence here. But there is no other way to go. All of humanity has already entered this process of correction and we have to understand that there’s no way back. We cannot stop history. The whole world is undergoing very swift development in the direction of this new quality – the quality of bestowal that will begin to rule the world.

That is why Kabbalists say that we don’t have any other means besides organizing an environment that will support us on the path to the goal and will give us strength, inspiration, and joy. We cannot receive all of this from the Creator and especially not from ourselves, but only from the society.

That is why our dissemination should emphasize inspiring events such as, for example, the cultural programs at the Conventions. This means “joining the good,” which is our motto of choice. The more programs like this we will have, which convey joy, unite, and might that has been acquired, the greater is the life force that this will give to every person.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/11, Preparation to the WE! Convention

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Equality In A Global Family

Dr. Michael LaitmanAll souls are interconnected and distributed into different levels of nature: still (S), vegetative (V), animate (A), human (H), and spiritual (S). The souls that have corrected themselves are on the spiritual level. Those on the human level have a “point in the heart” and aspire to spirituality. All the rest do not.

Possibly, the rest of the souls do not require such advancement. If a point in the heart awakens in a person, he or she ascends upward, but these will be special, exceptional cases. In general, the souls do not undergo such cardinal changes.

It means that we should not demand of humanity to adopt the structure of the developed societies. This is why it’s hard for us to believe Baal HaSulam who writes that all people already became one family and humanity is ready to ascend spiritually. Nevertheless, this is so.

A tiny part of the brain the size of a square millimeter rules over the entire body. Similarly, a small part of humanity has to govern it, connecting it with the Creator. From this part, everyone will receive correction in a passive form which corresponds to their type of souls.

Nothing should be done about it. Don’t equalize everyone according to the democratic model. They will be equal when each will become corrected according to their egoistic potential, their Reshimo (informational gene). Then everybody will become a single “body”; however, 90% of this “body” will be “flesh,” “bones,” “muscles,” “tendons,” and so on.

How many important organs does an organism have? How much is allotted to the brain? What portion of the brain represents a person per se? It’s a tiny part, a “microprocessor,” not more.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/21/2011 on The Principles of Global Education

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